Following the Map that leads to Art
Katherine Harmon is a freelance journalist, but her work is not limited to writing alone. Her expository collections span a number of ideas and considerations, most of them rooted in maps. The study of cartography is one that Harmon is intimately familiar with--not only in a surface sense, but in an evolutionary one as well. Having documented the transitions within mapmaking for a number of years, the journalist has become well acquainted with the artistic potential of cartography and the manners of manipulations that various artists apply to the field in order to make visually driven points. Summary Working with an impressive knowledge and scoping of maps, Harmon explores an engaging series of artistic expressions within the medium in her comprehensive volume The Map As Art. The provided section of the book presents the roots of Harmon’s arguments that reinforce the transition of maps into the wide field of art. Tracing back to the 1960s, the freelance journalist claims that cartography offered a key aspect to solidify its artistic potential: maps create a dichotomy between individual experience and collective knowledge. Indeed, unknown places can conjure up a wide variety of perceptions from person to person, but the dominant perception often has a collective party backing it up, assuming a certain degree of power. This can be further applied to systems that are still in their infancy, particularly processes and ideas. Harmon notes that the Internet and relationships (psychogeography, as it is termed) are both drawing significant attention from cartographers as they attempt to construct an agreeable framework of these unknown planes. Of course, regarding both familiar and unfamiliar systems, Harmon has access to no shortage of maps that document unique messages in their abilities to toy with the typical rules and traditions of cartography. The first examples display the United States: one is a streaky painting that blurs a great deal of state boundaries while the other only displays Iowa and Kentucky. Harmon presents these particular maps to declare an assumption that traditional mapmakers seem to abide by: the idea that their maps do represent reality and that viewers ought to agree with that representation. Artists, however, can twist the assumption, displaying their personal visions while instead encouraging viewers to consider their own personal visions of the subject matter as well. Harmon thereafter presents a series of other maps that cleverly display a number of personal visions for consideration. A map of Cambridge hypothesizes what the history of the region could be like through the eyes of ordinary people, explicitly asking which versions of history persist and which are forgotten. A world map that displays which countries use the most electric lighting highlights the fact that suspect Middle Eastern nations don’t use much light at all. A map of Kuwait during the Gulf War is heavily obscured by smoky plumes from burning oil fields. Analysis Overall, Harmon presents a firm foundation regarding the artistic potential of maps in order to answer three key questions about said artistic potential. The journalist explains that maps are art by virtue of the metaphors they offer. On the one hand, maps can provide a framework of foreign territories and of a comforting sense of order to the unknown. On the other hand, maps can offer political, economic, and/or social commentary on boundaries and what sort of power they imply or offer. This essentially plays into the concept of selective representation: cartographers may not create maps with an outright bias in mind, but maps are typically constructed with specific foci in mind, deliberately highlighting the proposed important points while generally ignoring or overlooking others. This fact further plays into one of Harmon’s reasons why maps can be considered art. As far as obtaining views on a place, process, or idea is concerned, maps precede territories. Maps can take any concept that can be visually represented and construct it in such a way that reinforces particular conclusions or assumptions. This can very well amount to a power struggle for representation among cartographers, artists, or anyone else with an interest in communicating through maps. Harmon is well aware of the fact that visual accessibility makes maps appealing to a variety of people and furthermore that a cornerstone of postmodern art is the subjectivity of truth. Maps handily reinforce that cornerstone: their subjectivity is at the mercy of their creators. As such, Harmon reasons that artists have valuable motivations in turning cartography into an art form. The studies of cartography, topology, geography, and the like are generally adhered to according to a certain set of presentation rules. These rules don’t apply to artists. They can freely disobey, misconstrue, or ignore the rules in order to achieve their own ends, occasionally mocking or satirical in nature. Perhaps the biggest victim of this twisting is the idea that traditional maps display reality without bias; there is an almost inherent motivation to trust, say, maps in an atlas or in a classroom. Artists, however, are not nearly as convinced that maps are so honest. Rather, they display an ideal reality, one marked by a new collection of intended effects and messages. Refererences Harmon, The Map as Art: https://wamsummer2015.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/2015-harmon.pdf